D-Day: The Battle for Normandy.(Brief article)(Book review)

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

Antony Beevor. Viking, $32.95 (608p) ISBN 978-0-670-02119-2

Beevor has established a solid reputation as a chronicler of WWII's great eastern front battles: Stalingrad and Berlin. In addressing D-Day, he faces much wider competition with historians like Stephen Ambrose and Max Hastings, who also use his method of integrating personal experiences, tactical engagements, operational intentions and strategic plans. Beevor combines extensive archival research with a remarkable sense of the telling anecdote: he quotes, for example, an officer's description of the "bloody mass of arms and legs and heads, [and] cremated corpses" created by …